KIRKUS REVIEW

A former reporter and
award-winning author rescues the almost unbelievable account of one family’s
experience in Nazi-occupied France.

Between the cruel
caricature of a nation of collaborators and the purposeful, Charles de
Gaulle–promoted myth of a country full of valiant resisters lies the truth for
most of the French during World War II. In the same manner a young girl’s diary
once vivified the Holocaust and the fate of 6 million for a postwar audience,
Kaiser (The Gay Metropolis: 1940-1996, 1997, etc.) tells, through the
Boulloche family, the story of lives turned complicated by the bizarre
realities of Vichy France. He fills us in first on the toll World War I took on
France, on the Boulloche family pedigree, and on the iconoclastic, republican
spirit of the parents, Jacques and Hélène. Although by no means pro-German and
for honorable reasons of their own, neither they nor their oldest son joined
the Resistance. Nevertheless, their arrests, deportations, and deaths in the
infamous internment camps all resulted from their silent approval of the
decision by André and sisters Christiane and Jacqueline to actively oppose the
Nazi occupation. Hitler, Eisenhower, Patton, Churchill, Roosevelt, and, of
course, de Gaulle appear frequently in the background of this narrative and
help supply just enough historical information to orient readers. In the
foreground always, though, are the young Boulloches and their close
confederates. Smuggling arms, recruiting friends, gathering information,
enduring torture, tales of escape, secret knocks, Gestapo interrogations,
fortuitous encounters, sabotage missions, clandestine apartments—all are part
of their story. Their resolve and bravery and even the “romance” of their
exploits are plain to readers but not to the survivors who knew too well the
price the family paid. For 50 years they remained, even to their own children,
largely silent about all of it. Thanks to a family connection forged in the
war’s immediate wake, Kaiser has managed to gather all the painful details, and
he assembles them masterfully.

At once heroic and
heartbreaking, this story leaves an indelible mark.

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